Category: chant

The newest book from CMAA is a companion to one that we have carried for years. Alongside the English edition of Dom Gregorio Suñol’s chant instruction book Gregorian Chant according to the Solesmes Method, we now have the same book in the original language, Spanish, as Método completo de canto gregoriano.

Dom Suñol, a monk of the abbey at Montserrat and the president of the Pontifical Academy of Sacred Music in Rome, wrote his chant teaching book in 1905, and for years it was expanded in numerous editions and translated into several languages. This new offering is a reprint of the eighth Spanish edition, from 1943.

The book is a thorough and methodical presentation based on the Solesmes method, which he praised in these words:

My teaching, I can say, is not mine. The school of Solesmes has served the Church so magnificently, restoring her chant to her, authentic, beautiful, serious, and suited to her holiness; it burst forth one day by inspiration of the Holy Spirit from the hearts of her most enlightened sons.

A new book of Mass propers in English and Latin has appeared from our friends in England: Fr. Guy Nicholls of the Birmingham Oratory has published Graduale Parvum: Introits.

The book contains entrance chants on simple melodies, much in the style of the Graduale Simplex and ICEL’s Roman Missal ordinary chants. Here’s an example:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The book has some attractive advantages. The melodies are freely adapted from the authentic Gregorian chants in the Graduale Romanum and often preserve their melodic outline, so they’re a step up for choirs that have used more formulaic English adaptations. In addition, the English texts are all from standard, well-known sources approved for liturgical use by the Holy See: the ICEL Roman Missal and the Revised Grail Psalter. They’re fully notated, including the psalm verses, in attractive, readable chant notation.

American readers can get the book from the CMAA Shop web site, a little easier and slightly cheaper than ordering it from the UK.

Incidentally, in 2002, Fr. Nicholls spoke at the CMAA Sacred Music Colloquium  about the propers and the task of promoting them; the talk has an introduction by Jeffrey Tucker, and included some examples from the book’s draft at the time, which the gathered participants sang.

Some time ago we got a note from the makers of a recent book of chants published in Finland.

Cantus sororum is a collection of transcribed medieval chants sung by Brigittine nuns, edited by musicologist Hilkka-Liisa Vuori. If I understand right, the chants were associated with the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Some samples from an album by duo Vox Silentii are on the net:
Transplantatur ab Jericho
Benedicamus in laudem Patris

An article about the material is on-line at the site of Vox Silentii, and the book is available from the editor or from the Catholic Information Center in Helsinki.

You can read the book’s introduction here.